Then I'd really understand the apparently cool thing Sam Ruby is doing with RSS feeds to grab incoming links and excerpt them on his blog.
categories: metablog
11:31:18 PM 
say what []
Instapundit graces another (well deserved) link to the Devil's Excrement today with a gratuitous swipe at Berkeley. I'm not sure I get the subtext. Is it that the perennial protesters here in the East Bay don't have as much fun as Venezuelan protesters do?
This follows the continuing S.F. sucks theme at the Gawker (and from Gawker publisher Denton, who may have drunk the Kool-Aid when he was in residence in the South Bay), loudly applauded by the frequently brilliant Ken Layne.
[Update: But his ordinarily sharp wit seems a little dull in this huffy Fisking of some lame comeback to the Gawker article. Whatever gets your blood racing, I guess.]
Hey, I thought it was ess eff people who were obsessed with competing with el lay, and SoCal people who were all laid back and "San Francisco is nice, ho hum" about it.
It must be about time for another one of those Wall Street Journal articles on "those wacky people in Berkeley."
categories: memewatch
9:23:34 PM say what []
It now appears that the one-time Camper Van Beethoven reunion shows last fall were some kind of dry run for a more substantial reunion.
Look at all the tour dates listed at the Cracker site.
The show I saw was a great nostalgia trip for me and it seemed to be an almost religious experience for some of the younger folks who missed out on seeing CVB before their untimely breakup around 1989 or '90.
Still, like any reunified band, if they don't work up some new material, the act is going to get stale. Since they were always pretty tight, despite a kind of jammy-loose feel to their arrangements, I thought the show felt a bit like a re-tread, even with Jonathan Segel (I know I always misspell his last name) once again in the band.
Still, it looks like Andrew Bayer may get a chance to see them after all this time around.
categories: x-syndicate
6:17:14 PM say what []
Here's something odd. Back in November I posted a link to Pete Townsend's review of Kurt Cobain's diaries. Now that the pedophile (or paedophile, for British readers) arrest story has broken, it seems that people must be Googling his name and somehow finding their way to my old post.
Even though it was written about an entirely different topic, because it mentions Townsend, it has now spawned a growing discussion area. Weird.
Obviously people need to express themselves and stories like these stir up strong feelings (although if you want to see a livelier debate with strong feelings expressed on both sides, check out this Kuro5hin thread, where I'm surprised to see so many defending borderline practices), so I don't really mind that this is going on, but I do wonder about the thought process (and the literal clickthrough process) that has led some of my commenters to my site.
categories: memewatch x-syndicate
10:44:52 AM say what []
Scot Hacker has posed a provocative thought-experiment to his readers who defend video games that depict killing. In his post entitled Just Pretending he asks which is worse, rape or murder. Then he asks whether it would be OK for children to play rape games.
This has spawned an active discussion, at the birdhouse and elsewhere, including a long debate in LiveJournalspace.
Where do you come down on this?
categories: x-syndicate
10:18:29 AM say what []
First, when I post to a Movable Type blog and include a link to another Movable Type blog, I expect MT to "autodiscover" the ping URL for the linked post and automatically send a Trackback ping. It's worked that way before and I'm pretty sure I haven't changed my preferences. But just now I posted to A Meme List with a link to the birdhouse and no Trackback ping was sent. Sure, I went to Scot's blog, clicked the TB link for the post I was commenting on, copied the TB URL, went back to MT, edited the last post, manually entered (OK, pasted) the Trackback URL, and saved the edited post, but isn't the point of autodiscovery that I shouldn't have to do all that?
Then, over here in Radio land, I rely on my multiauthor tool to pick up posts from my other blogs that show up in my news aggregator and automatically post them to my x-syndicate category, where I can promote them to the home page and otherwise categorize them at my leisure if I so choose. But this morning I saw my last night's post to X-POLLEN show up just fine in my aggregator but for whatever reason it has not been autoposted to my RFB syndication category.
I have no idea why this would suddenly fail to work, but it means more tedious manual transcription for me, and it may mean the same thing when the meme post shows up on the next hourly check.
It's all very odd.
categories: metablog radioactive movablefeats
9:58:42 AM say what []
Once a week on Sunday night, the Dirty Questions site posts a new sex-related question of the week and a blog entry answering it. The comments are open to anyone who wants to drop by and answer the question as well. Should make for lively dinner conversation.
categories: metablog
9:09:11 AM say what []
