GlitchNYC

When spell-checking a word, I often just type it up in the google bar of firefox. It generally gets the job done, but it’s not the most reliable way of finding the correct spelling. For example, looking up “ordourves” brings up plenty of confirmation that you’re correct, but in reality you’ll just be joining lots of other people in mis-spelling hors d’oeuvre.

This morning, I was checking on the word Aesthetic using the “just google it, I’m in a hurry” method, and found this lovely article on wikipedia.

Not only did it list the correct (and alternate) spellings, but it also answers some heady questions:

• What counts as “art?”
• What should we judge when we judge art?
• What should art be like?
• What is the value of art?

I thought it was a nice little early-morning treat, so I figured I’d share!

It’s a complete “Duh!” right? If you want the community to talk about your product, service, podcast, photos, or whatever, you should make it easy for them to link to.

I read Tantek’s piece today and almost dismissed it as a no brainer…

Until I realized how bad I was at it.

I haven’t given people any obvious and easy and obvious ways bookmark or blog about either The Alternative Music Show or Felt Up. He lists a bunch of smart ways to go about it, and I’ll certainly be going through the list this weekend when I have some time to dedicate to it.

Now, let’s see if I can come up with something more compelling than “I’m a listener” badges. Any ideas?

Well, after about 3 years of blogging here, I’m starting to take a look at what this site is about and why I do it.

Yes, it’s reached that time, I’m posting the inevitable blog about blogging…

Many of you have probably noticed the new influx of “daily link” posts. I’ve decided to experiment with splicing in my del.icio.us links. I generally annotate these pretty well, so I consider them mini-blog-entries, and I know that people have been writing me and talking to me about them, so they’re being found useful. I intend to continue doing my normal long-format articles here and there, but I enjoy seeing what other people find interesting, so I think I’ll keep the del.icio.us posts around for a while. Let me know if you hate them at webmail2004 A T glitchnyc.com

The podcast has been keeping me mighty busy, and it’s been a lot of fun to talk with so many great artists and get permission to play their stuff. I’m really really happy with the holiday special as well. It runs about 40 minutes and is all great podsafe holiday music, so it’s perfect for burning to CD and playing around the house over the holidays. Give it a listen, especially if you haven’t checked out podcasting yet. You’ll be amazed at how outstanding these indie + under-appreciated artists are.

We’ll be heading to CT and Upstate NY for the holidays, and I’m really looking forward to the vacation. I love this season, especially when music is an integral part of it. Thanks to the podcast, for the first time since I was last in a choir singing holiday tunes from September on through Christmas, I feel like this year has really milked the season for all it’s worth.

Five steps every company should take to prepare for a PR crisis that might emerge from the blogosphere… and how to combat it with a human voice (aka, your own blogs, vlogs, and podcasts)

• Read the brilliant article at MicroPersuasion. Here’s a marketer who at least understands how to work the cluetrain.

Well, here it is, the night of November 5th and I�ve got a wonderful little buzz from the mediocre Cosecha 2001 from Palacio de Monsalud, recommended by the local liquor store owner. I remember now why I don�t trust their recommendations.

Tonight’s plans changed quite a few times, starting with ideas of going to CGC benefit concert in the city, morphing into a local movie theater trip to see Serenity or Wallace and Gromit � and having struck out at everything up until then, ended with us heading home for a �date� night in watching a favorite movie with a good bottle of wine.

I �delicioused� a great little list of cheap wines that don�t taste like ass a while back, and went to the store armed with a bunch of names and descriptions, only to find that no one around here stocks them. Figures. I ended up with what the shopkeep wanted to move off his shelves.

So a glass or two in and a few hours and a movie later, and I�m feeling very into the idea of NaDruWriNi � just enough lubrication to allow me to plow through my normal writing inhibitions and get some ideas down on paper. I�m not doing the NaNoWriMo this year, as I�ve got plenty to do already this month, besides doing the requisite family visits around thanksgiving.

So instead, I give you this short story. Ill-conceived and only half formed as I begin it, but hopefully bolstered by my active imagination and alcohol enabled fleet-fingers.

The Clockwork Magician

�Chi-ging… ging… ging…� The bells on the door of the little shop chimed softly as the woman entered. She was tall, maybe 32 or so, and had a stateliness about her.

�Hello Suzanne. What�s the trouble this week?� Daniel asked, extending his hand to her.

Suzanne looked up at him from her purse and smiled, handing her pocketwatch to him and holding his hand as she did. She always marveled at his hands, so slender and delicate, more like a woman�s than any man she�d known. Soft and precise and oh! She�d been holding it a little too long she realized. She flushed and smiled again, taking her hand back.

�It�s this old pocketwatch. Can�t seem to keep it together, no matter how gentle I try to be. I know it�s not fashionable for a lady to carry a watch, but, well you know me.�

�I certainly do� Daniel said, smiling back at her now. Daniel�s body matched his hands; his lanky form moved with a cat�s grace, and he took the watch from her hand and opened it, regarding first it�s face, then hers, in one silky motion.

She softened a bit under his gaze and he cocked his head to the side a bit and smiled, holding the broken watch to his ear.

�Oh. A slipped gear. We�ll have this fixed in a moment.� He said, already taking a tiny, well worn screwdriver from his toolbench. Read the rest of this entry »

Budget rent-a-car is sponsoring a nation-wide treasure hunt for four weeks, starting last week and going through the first 3 of November. Each week they pick 4 cities, in “North, South, East, and West” groups. Find the hidden sticker each week, and you win 10 grand. It’s only Wednesday, but I’m pretty sure that they’re in Baltimore, for “East” and I know they’re in Seattle for West.

Anyone got a little treasure-hunting in their blood? I have a feeling our friend Jon might be interested, especially since San Diego was screwed up in week one, so we already know they’re going to do a re-do there week four. I’ll probably be sending an email off to Carolyn to let her know about the mad dash for the treasure out in Seattle too. Her art is amazing, but hey, an extra $10g might help pay the bills.

The video clues on that site are fun, because you have a sense of “hey, I’ve been there” for most of them. I bet they’ll be hitting New York soon, and I’ll be watching the clues closely!

Happy Hunting!

NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month project inspires people (primarily blogging types) all over the world to get off their lazy butts in November and write write write. The primary force behind writers block is static inertia, I.E. “a body at rest tends to stay at rest.” NaNoWriMo is designed to break through that block and get you writing, to the tune of 50,000 works over the course of November. The official rules even state that the object isn’t to get you to write the Great American Novel - it’s to get you writing at all.

Static Inertia is sticky wicket, however, and some people never quite get the ball rolling. Blogs abound with announcements of the author’s intention to participate, and maybe even an early snippet, and then go silent on the matter.

As a tribute, parody, or both, Abroad-Abroad.org (shes a broad who’s abroad - get it?) is hosting NaDruWriNi - National Drunken Writing Night this Saturday, November 5th.

From abroad-abroad.org

Ahhh. Nothing is more satisfying that sending an e-mail out to all your pretentious writer friends declaring your heartfelt dedication to NaNoWriMo, and then not completing one teeny tiny single bit of it.

Staying away from NaNoWriMo because you got burned last year? Need a push to get started this year? Fire up the laptops and come participate in an ambitious writing project thats much less, um… ambitious.

Okay, first thing’s first - you can find all my back articles here:

• http://www.glitchnyc.com/static

The big advantage of switching to wordpress is the fact that with a mysql database on the back end, pages are rendering much faster. Various search engines have been crawling my site like crazy, and while I like being listed, it was really starting to bog down the server as blosxom attempted to render all the articles from 2003 at one go, then all the articles of 2004, then all the articles from January 2004, ad nauseum.

That said, that system worked very nicely for getting picked up by Google, and I still get a kick out of coming up as the #1 site for the words “dorky teen“

I’m not sure if I’m going to import the back articles into WordPress or not, but for now, they’re frozen here, rendered as static HTML, and all old links will continue to work in perpetuity.

I’m really enjoying WordPress. The markdown plugin alone is making my life much easier, and I’m loving the trackbacks feature - WordPress automatically tries to tell any site I link to that I mentioned them with trackback ping.

Frequent visitors to GlitchNYC and readers of my feed might have noticed some big changes around here. My little server was starting to have some trouble keeping up with all the traffic generated recently, and after launching the GlitchCast, it became apparent that wordpress was running quite a bit faster than blosxom.

I also ran in to quite a few blosxom bugs when attempting to render my pages to static HTML, so rather than attempt kludges in perl, I figured it was time to migrate up to a new system.

I’ve got 340 articles in blosxom, so I’m not abandoning the system entirely, but I’ll be using wordpress for all new posts, and redirecting the feed here. Thanks to everyone who’s put up with the crazy multiple posting in my RSS/Atom feeds, hopefully everything is settled now.