In four weeks the second annual National Blog Posting Month will begin, wherein you pledge to post at least once a day for all of November for no reason at all.
This year participation is being managed through social network Ning, where I am curating a music bloggers group.
I also plan to offer some manner of prize since I won one last year, but I have not yet decided on anything suitably awesome.
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Ethicurean posted the truly brilliant Vegetable Orchestra, who perform music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Words escape me; please refer to moving pictures, below:
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When I saw Bettye Lavette @ Bonnaroo in 2006 I described her as a bloodthirsty Motown praying mantis whose goal it was to devour the entire audience before the end of her set. Yeah, Bonnaroo was weird, but it’s an apt description considering how long she was in industry exile; she came back hungry.
Read a great Stylus Magazine interview with Bettye about her new covers disc, wherein she is backed by Drive-By Truckers. Link via Largehearted Boy, who also offers a legal listen to some of the tracks from Scene of the Crime
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The Strand offers books by the foot, a service providing decorative book collections in any style and subject. Prices range from $10- to $400- per foot. A cool gift for your bibliophile friends, and a fantastic resource for set dressing; at $300/ft the Victorian era books are rather stunning. Via Kottke.
K-link part deux: Do you need 8 oz. of dehydrated strawberry powder? You can buy it, and other molecular gastronomy fixins, at L’Epicerie. After you’re done salivating, hit up this exhaustive blog post for info and resources.
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Then there were quick hits.
46 tax deductions for bloggers. Um, hells yeah. Via Akkams.
One time in college Elise did a whole photo project where she painted me with light. If she was here I could tell you the whole story about how her professor was friends with the originator of the technique. In any event, if you have a camera with long exposure time and a tripod you can do it yourself.
More photography: All panoramic pictures, all the time. Want to shoot your own? Read up on Gigapan, an automated robotic tripod. Latter two links from Contentious, former via Mashable; a great feed (if you can keep up with 20+ posts a day).
If your phone and internet errands are swallowing up your free time you should look into outsourcing to an offshore personal assistant; sounds like they’re worth the money if you have the right sort of tasks on your to-do list.
I don’t know that I realized New York City was quite so tall over a century ago.
Free iTunes Songs is a handy RSS feed that links you to all of iTunes free content, including the weekly free song downloads.
Second Rotation is an online pawn shop that pays you for your used consumer electronics up front, saving you the hassle of dealing with an actual buyer. As to where all the items go, the site is a bit cagey. I have one word for you: gnomes. Via recent daily fixation Unclutterer.
Finally, Torrez was very nearly my first favorite blogger (and, not only because he ran Power Bloggers). He’s back, and recently posted some simple advice on increasing blog traffic. After a month of following his own advice his Alexa rank is up ~200k. Probably advice worth taking.