A rare glimpse at Arcati Crisis in the wild, as Gina and I duet on our new cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star” at last night’s benefit for #blamedrewscancer.
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Blog Spotlight: Meish.org
I’ve decided that as frequently as I can I’d like to highlight a specific blog I love by talking about the blogger and linking to my favorite recent entries. It’s only fitting that I start with the single blog that was at the top of my link list when I launched nine years ago, and continues to be a daily read today:
Meg Pickard’s meish.org.
Meish wasn’t always Meish – it was once Not So Soft. In that capacity I consider it my parent blog, as I created my own specifically to ape what Meg was doing daily.
I’ve read Meg ever since, and she’s never stopped being compelling. She lives in London, was schooled as a sociologist, and spent time abroad conducting ethnographies. She presently works in some capacity for The Guardian.
Meg has a way – as all great bloggers do – of making the common seem very compelling. She also writes wonderful lists (frequently etymological in nature), takes clever and pretty photographs (even with an iPhone), and shares thoughts on social media.
And, as borne out by her original blog name (an Ani reference), Meg has wonderfully eclectic taste in music (and shares some of my OCD organizational qualities).
Some other recent highlights: she tracks the occurrence of “Flying Ant Day” with uncanny accuracy; she ruminates on the concept of time tourism (which I have discussed at length with Rabi); attempts to create a universal theory of measurement; dissects nationalist “visit us” campaigns; makes tables out of old maps; details past packing mishaps; and she bemoans a lack of adjectiveless sandwiches.
And that’s all just in the last year. Meish posts a few times a week, which makes it easy to follow in RSS; more voracious readers will want to subscribe to Meg’s many-times-daily tumblr.
Having met Rabi a long time ago, and Alison more recently, I’d say Meg is probably the blogger I’d most like to meet in real life.
Tuesday Morning Tech Links
I flag a lot of techie links, as if I’m going to go and use 39 how-tos or 87 productivity tools right there on the spot. That’s not how it works. You tuck that information away for when you need to look back on it. And a scattering of bookmarks across my five different computers is not a good tucking method.
Hell, even cloud bookmarking doesn’t really do it – for me a bookmark is for a page (in a book or on the web) I know I will come back to at a specific time. This sort of thing is more open-ended.
Luckily, I have the ultimate in permanent memory technology – a nearly decade-old blog.
Elise has been doing a lot of CSS work lately, which is an area of web design where I’ve fallen behind. Thus, I love this Getting Started with CSS guide, which is packed with 20 starter tools. (via @mayhemstudios)
Handy list of the 22 most useful free apps for your PC. At the beginning I was like – um, duh – but as it continues it will surely slip you a surprise or two. (via @robangeles)
In a similar vein, 30 open source apps for web designers is a litany of code- and image- editors and FTP apps that I’ve never even heard of before. (via @bkmacdaddy)
I sometimes have a blank moment where I’m futzing with my server can’t remember exactly what I’m supposed to be doing with my .htaccess file, and the next time I have that moment I’m going to re-read 16 Useful htaccess tricks.
If you are several dozen levels of “Internets Wizard” higher than that, perhaps you’d be intrigued by the Ultimate Round-Up of Fireworks Tutorials. I have Fireworks now, but what I haven’t had is time to level up my skills in it.
If you or someone you know is still Twitter-averse or a Twitter-virgin, they should refer to the mammoth Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter, which covers just about any question you could conceive of. (via @Sharonhayes)
Alternately, for the power-user, how about a guide to how to use twitter when you follow several-thousand people? Around 300 I felt hopelessly lost, and started searching for an external app to sort people into groups. This article takes a more organic approach. (via @danavan)
Finally, not really a tech link, but it appeals to this same crowd: What to include in your design contracts.
Filmstar. Rock’n’Roll Star. Wife.
Elise & Co. (aka Filmstar) rocked an amazing show tonight at the M-Room, followed by the obscenely sexy and awesome Stone Thrown (like Muse, but Philly-local and half-Asian).
Here’s Filmstar’s newest tune, which I am in love with. Note the Bowie / Karen O. dual influences.
(Or, head to YouTube to watch “Rock & Roll Star.”)
There is prelim talk of a worlds-colliding Filmstar v. Arcati Crisis party/show sometime in the fall. If that were to happen, I would play the shit out of a tambourine on that song.
Shake It Off
Last night our Arcati Crisis rehearsal ended with me in fantastic voice and looking rather delicious.
I decided to harness those powers to record my first-ever video for CK – of the reticent original song “Shake It Off,” that has proven nearly impossible to record an audio demo of.
Behold:
More videos to come!