Tuesday, December 11, 2007

So long, Anita

Word circulated late yesterday that Anita Rowland has died after living with cancer for several years. She was 51.

Anita and I never met face to face, but she was an active participant in the early weblogging community, particularly as those pesky upstart weblogs and the more established online journaling world threatened to abrade against one another. Anita bridged that (narrow) gap easily, avoided acrimony and welcomed all. As both forms drifted toward what are now commonly thought of as "blogs", she kept right on doing what she'd always done, maintaining her "List of Links" weblog and her "Book of Days" journal. Both have been regular reads for me; I will miss her updates.

Anita was also well-known and loved in the science fiction fandom world and, of course, in Seattle, where she organized some of the earliest weblog/journal meetups and made everyone feel a part of a real community. I know it's tempting when a friend dies to say that a little light has left the world, but in fact I think the world is a far brighter place because Anita shared her light with so many folks and by example encouraged them to pass it along.

Her husband Jack has posted a small memorial for Anita on his own website and thoughts and recollections are being added to it from around the real and virtual worlds. My thoughts are with him and all of Anita's family and with everyone who had the great good fortune to be a part of her book of days.

Monday, July 16, 2007

The ‘thon is on!

For the past five years, otherwise clearly rational individuals have flipped their lids and decided to stay up all night, update their weblogs every half hour and engage in high jinks and folderol, all in the name of charity. It's the Blogathon, baby, and it's on again for 2007.

Last year's event raised almost $100,000 for charities of the bloggers' choice (the only stipulation for choosing a beneficiary is that they must accept online donations) and 2007's event looks to bring in even more participants and dough for vital organizations. (And yes, this whole deal is on the up-and-up. It's co-administered by my pal Cat and has a proven track record.)

Unfortunately, as in past years, I'll be traveling during the 'thon, so The BradLands won't be among the active participants, but I'll be pledging a couple of my favorite bloggers. Why don't you get in on the act too, as a sleep-deprived participant or a sponsor of your favorite weblog? Stay up late and make a difference!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

The 2.0nd Coming

Welcome to the world, Ollie, and congrats to mom and dad.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Another anniversary, of sorts, coming up

This coming Saturday, it will have been eight years since I published a braindump I called Why I Weblog. The piece grew from a post and dialog on the earliest weblog-related listserv, was linked to by a lot of folks who were doing this sort of thing back in the day, and three years later was even published in a book.

I concluded my ramblings with this thought:

As the weblog movement matures, our sites will wrest editorial authority from the few editors of today and divide it among the many. “They” can continue to publish the chaff; we’ll be there to point our hungry readers toward the wheat. Hopefully, we’ll have fun doing it and learn a lot along the way.

And so it goes, my friends. And so it goes. Try not to let a day go by without having fun and learning while we’re revolutionizing the media, okay?

Monday, March 5, 2007

Everything old…

From the official Tumblr blog:

Last year, a site called project.ioni.st showed us a completely different form. The long editorials with meticulously formatted links and images we were used to seeing on blogs seemed absent. All of the editors’ thoughts, creations, experiences, and discoveries poured down the screen. It was like flipping through the scrapbook of a like-minded person we had never met.

The editors seemed to post with zero obligations. Anything neat they came across went up. Little or no commentary was needed. The only context was the author. How absolutely beautiful.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Gonna miss ya…

Last night a friend passed along the news that Leslie Harpold had passed away unexpectedly and I just sat at the computer for a while, stunned and sad.

I didn't know Leslie well; we met a couple of times and have a ton of mutual friends. I knew her best from the web, as seems to be the case with so many folks in my life these days. She was the publisher of Smug, one of those wonderfully canny webzines that sprung up on the early personal web and one of the best to boot. And, of course, for the past few years, I had delighted in her annual Advent calendar, mentioned here a few days ago and part of her wonderful personal website.

Sunday as I was preparing for our annual holiday party, I took a few minutes to check e-mail and stopped in to check on the calendar, noting that it hadn't been updated for a few days. I assumed technical difficulties and was devastated to learn worse.

Leslie was one of a pretty small group of people who shaped the early personal web, whose sites and words showed a lot of us what all the Hoopla could be about. I'm thinking about her family and her friends right now, the pain and loss they feel. I'll miss Leslie's voice on the web, and the life she brought to life.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Pass the plate back to Dori!

My pal Dori needs your help to fight crime! Her cool license plate was stolen and she'd like it back, no questions asked. If you've seen this plate...



...please be in touch. I've had my plates lifted a couple of times and certainly understand the hassle it causes. Maybe one of y'all can help Dori avoid it. Do a good turn, please.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Yeah, he’s that guy

More Merlin love: The Adventures of Phone Guy, episodes one, two and three.

Stay on the line: Phone Guy playlist.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Stay up late for a cause

Got a weblog? Course ya do! So get thee over to Blogathon and put your pesos where your passion is. This event is one of my very favorite things on the web (as a spectator; alas, in the past as this year, I'll be away from the computer on B-day).

The process is simple: Pick a charity that accepts online donations, commit to updating your weblog every 30 minutes for 24 hours during the Blogathon, gather pledges from friends and readers. Then: Do it!

Registrations are open now and as I write this, nearly 300 webloggers have taken nearly $25,000 in pledges for various charities. (Since it started five years ago, annual Blogathons have raised almost a quarter of a million dollars for deserving causes.) Do it. Do it. Do it.

(If you can't participate yourself, you can certainly pledge one of your favorite webloggers. No excuses. Go. Now.)

Friday, April 14, 2006

Here’s to ten more…

I have never been bored in the company of Lance Arthur, not online and certainly not in person, not once in the ten years he's been writing on the web.

Anniversaries like this, the round ten-year kind, are supposed to herald retrospectives that showcase what has come before and yield tear-stained memories of the changes wrought and the regrets still painful and discolored. Unfortunately, I can't dig deep into the archives because some months ago, it was all erased. Gone. The digital bits and bytes all lost except for the few tattered remnants logged by the Wayback Machine, and looking at those pages kind of makes me sad.

But it's been a long time since we sat down to talk, you and I, so I thought I would take this opportunity to offer up some reflections on what has been and what might be, on where I've traveled and what I've seen, the hopes that were dashed to the rocks and the dreams fulfilled.

Lance's was one of the first truly personal websites I discovered in my early surfing and in my own such efforts, I've spent the time since trying and failing to live up to his example. Offline and on, he's a genuinely good guy: smart, funny, honest, creative—an authentically beautiful mind. He's handsome and shy, bitchily witty and charmingly self-deprecating. He is, in short, a catch, and someone I'm so very grateful to know.

Congratulations on achieving ten years along the information superhighway, my friend.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Hey there, gorgeous…

Hey, looky: That's my pals Stewie and Caterina on the cover of Newsweek talking about Flickr and the future of the web. Rock!

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Hooray, hooray!

My heartiest congratulations to Meg and Jason. I'm pleased to say I knew them when.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

For added accuracy, I had a few beers first…

B9 D++ T+ K S F I- O X+++ E++ L C-- Y4 R- W P+ M5 N+ H++

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Dan Says and I do…

Mr. Budiac has requested that I fill out my AOL member profile.

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Publicist for a leading American resident theatre company. 2000–present.
2. Director of marketing for a community arts education center. 1997–2000.
3. Promotions associate and editor for a public television station. 1995–1997.
4. Freelance journalist. 1989–the occasional present.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. The American President
2. Airplane!
3. The Producers
4. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Four places I’ve lived:

1. St. Louis, Missouri. 1994–forevermore.
2. Richmond Heights, Missouri. 1990–1994.
3. Webster Groves, Missouri. 1987–1990.
4. New London, Missouri. 1968–1987.

Four TV shows I love:

1. The West Wing
2. The Dick Van Dyke Show
3. Battlestar Galactica
4. The Big Valley

Four places I’ve vacationed:

1. San Francisco, California
2. Las Vegas, Nevada
3. Parke County, Indiana
4. New York, New York (the city so nice they named it twice)

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Stuffed lobster, Shaw's Crab House, Chicago, Illinois
2. Boeuf bourguignon, Chez Leon, St. Louis, Missouri
3. Poached asparagus, anywhere, anytime
4. Creme brulee, 609, St. Louis, Missouri (among many exemplars)

Four sites I visit daily RSS feeds I devour whenever they update:

1. Towleroad: pretty, witty and gay.
2. Any move Lance Arthur makes: C'mon. It's Lance.
3. My Flickr friends photos: A dozen little reunions every day.
4. Broadway Stars: A quick précis of most things I have to read.

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Lifting a glass with my pals at any of a dozen watering holes in Chicago, Illinois.
2. Hanging out with the big, beautiful brains of my pals at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas (soon, my pretties!).
3. In London, at the Royal National Theatre, seeing Once in a Lifetime.
4. In a post-coital snuggle between Taye Diggs and Jesse L. Martin.

I hereby tag the following people:

1. RuPaul
2. Ben Roethlisberger
3. Barney Stinson
4. Rosie O'Donnell (in verse, please)

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Perhaps, but even so…

So very, very sexy, if in a different way.

Anyone else would tell you the same.

But I'll add that I miss ya.

Monday, October 31, 2005

They did

My very good friend (~and former lover~) Anil Dash got married on Saturday, to the lovely and talented (and, it goes without saying, extremely patient and forgiving) Alaina Browne.

I couldn't be in New York for the wedding but, this being the 21st century, I sort of felt like I was there.

Congratulations and much love.

Saturday, September 3, 2005

Underpants!

Hey! See below for updates!



Who doesn't love underpants? I love underpants. You know who would really love underpants? People who don't have any underpants.

Here's the deal: Thousands of folks affected by Hurricane Katrina are being evacuated to shelters in Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois for who knows how long. Generous people have donated clothing and other supplies for them, but there's a serious shortage of clean undergarments for women, men and children.

Click here to donate cash via PayPal and DropCash. I'll be purchasing and drop-shipping as many clean, packaged undergarments as possible. They'll go directly to folks who fled the hurricane-affected areas and are currently being cared for at relief centers in St. Louis; Belleville, Illinois; and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.

I've already made a couple of big cash donations to the American Red Cross—and I encourage you to do the same, however much you're able. But if you can, please contribute to the BradLands Underpants Drive too.

Thanks, and I'll keep you updated on this project's progress. Questions? Just ask.

Note: Your contribution will be processed through my business PayPal account, so you'll get a receipt from this gal. I'm also taking care of the PayPal fees, so your entire gift will go directly to underpants. Cross my...er, heart.

[September 4] Update: The Underpants Drive has topped $700 in contributions and a pledge from anonymous donor that will take care of shipping. I'm covering the PayPal fees.

That means 100% of your dollars are going to buy understuff for folks who need it.

The first boxes of briefs and panties and socks and whatnot should hit the ground on Tuesday or Wednesday, and will be distributed by reputable organizations to folks displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Thank you! And spread the word—the BradLands Underpants Drive continues.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Over and out

Somehow in the hustle and bustle of the past few weeks, I missed the sign-off of Virulent Memes. Thanks for all the good reading, Graham.

Do you know what it means…?

I'm stuck at work and keeping track with increasing horror and worry of the reports on Hurricane Katrina. Good friends, including the two most beautiful men in Louisiana, are in my thoughts.

And to all you circuit kids out there, hang on to whatever you were gonna spend on Decadence this year and give it to the Red Cross instead. NOLA's gonna need it.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

In 3-D!

Mena Trott and the Movable Type posse put together a nifty custom ViewMaster and reel set for a recent conference. (I honestly had no idea they still made ViewMasters. With the return of real wooden Lincoln Logs, my long-past childhood lives again!)

Behold: If Bloggers Had Been Around Throughout History.

(And yes, you can order your own—spendy!—custom ViewMaster reels and viewers.)

Sunday, August 7, 2005

I also considered “The Fabulous Barrett Boys”…

Cameron and Damien Barrett—the Blogger Twins—are making a bid to be contestants on the next season of The Amazing Race.

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

That word again!

Rebecca asked about the citation I mentioned in this entry, and whether Peter was, in fact, credited with the coinage. I went to look again and realized that, in fact, my reference to Peter's comment appears to pre-date the comment itself. That may be because his quip was in an undated sidebar on his site. Anyway, here we are, sic transit gloria mundi, caveat lector, etcetera etcetera...



Note also that this appears to be a draft entry which, I take it, means it hasn't moved into the printed edition of the Oxford English Dictionary just yet.

The OED entry for "weblog", incidentally, cites Jorn Barger—rightly, I think—as being the first to use it in this sense in 1997 on his Robot Wisdom weblog. (Back then, of course, we knew it as http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html.)

It is defined as "A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary."

That's the second definition, of course. The first definition for "weblog" is "A file storing a detailed record of requests handled (and sometimes also errors generated) by a web server." I remember back in the late 20th century when there was some concern people would hear the word "weblog" and not understand which sense was meant.

Thank heavens Peter Merholz came along and gave us a convenient shorthand, eh?

Monday, August 1, 2005

Present at the birth

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from Bill Johnston, a professor of history at Wesleyan University, that left me momentarily gob-smacked:

You might have received millions of messages to this effect, but did you know you are cited as the first to use the word "blog" in the OED (1999)? Very cool. Not many people have an honor like that; I'm delighted to see that your site is still going strong.

As it happens, his was the first and, so far, only message about the matter I've received, but I went and looked in the online OED—one of the perks of the occasional academic life is free access thereto—and, sure enough, this little ol' website is the first citation for the word. (I haven't had an opportunity to examine a printed version of the dictionary, so I don't know if it's included there as well.)

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, let's be clear: I am not claiming to have coined the word "blog". I've been dragged along that sort of road before and don't care to repeat the experience. As far as I know, my pal Peter Merholz has to take the blame for it, having waggishly proclaimed six years ago that he was henceforth pronouncing "weblog" as "wee-blog". I made a note of his jape hereabouts and it is to that weblog entry—currently languishing in The Lost Archives but hopefully soon to be republished—that the OED citation refers.

(And I must apologize to Mr. Johnston because, although I transcribed his e-mail here for just this moment, I seem to have misplaced the original and, therefore, his address. I have the distinct impression that I never got around to replying and thanking him for his kind note. Bill, if you're reading this, do be in touch.)

Anyway, I bring this dreary subject up for two reasons.

First, I have been enjoying the Lady Rebecca Blood's interviews with some of the early practitioners of the weblog form, including Matt Haughey (in which piece this site is again name-checked) and Jessamyn West. They are two of the folks I have been privileged to have as part of my life this past few years, thanks primarily to our shared interest in personal publishing, and each has an unique perspective on where the web has been and where it may be going.

Second, despite my rather contrary insistence on referring to this site and others like it as a "weblog" (sans truncation), it has recently come to pass that I will soon be writing and editing a site that is not only called a "blog", it has that word in its name.

Somewhere at this very moment, I feel certain Peter Merholz is either smirking or cringing.

Possibly both.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Hyperbole much?

Such a fuss! I know that The BradLands is blocked by some content filters (such as at some workplaces) and I've never really minded. First of all, hey, it's a silly little personal website. Secondly, it's not the government squelching my right to post links about hot boys and Safari extensions. No big. If folks are trying to read my site at work and can't...well, they can wait until they get home like the rest of the grownup world.

On the other end of the reaction spectrum, our pal Cory Doctorow noticed that a website to which he contributes, SurfControl for its "adult content". His reaction to this outrage was measured, deliberate and not at all out of proportion.

I just got off the phone with a manager at SurfControl, who assures me that they've corrected the error, but that it will take 24h for the fix to take hold. During that period, users of Surfcontrol's paying customers will be walled off from Boing Boing the same way that Chinese and Iranian citizens are prevented from seeing parts of the Internet due to the judgements of unaccountable authorities in those countries.

Why yes, it's exactly the same way, isn't it? Except, you know, in the important ways that it isn't. Surfcontrol's paying customers are "walled off" from the site because...well, they paid to be. If they didn't but their boss did, they're still not horribly oppressed like the citizens of an unaccountable regime. Their boss is accountable, probably, to a board or a higher boss who'd rather they didn't pleasure surf on company time.

And while I enjoy reading Boing Boing and am far (far, far) from the most prudish person you're likely to meet, I can see how some of their edgier posts might be considered inappropriate in certain environments. "Adult website" might be pushing it but, c'mon, so is comparing what's going on here to arbitrary and evil government censorship.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Two (well, three) things about Cameron Marlow…

1. If you maintain a weblog, whether you're new to personal publishing or have been at it a while, go now and participate in this brief survey—entirely on the up-and-up, you won't be spammed, it's for a good cause (Cam's graduation), etc. etc. Do it before Monday! I, for one, can't wait to see the results.

2. During SXSW, someone snapped a picture of me making out with smooching Cameron at Paradise. If it was you, please please please send me or point me toward the picture. Thanks!

3. He's just cute as the Dickens, ain't he?