Up, Up With People

Listening to: Klassy, “Sweet Awakening.” Listening to the Bonita Applebaum sample made me queue up the Tribe documentary again. So good! Anyway, Klassy is a Filipino-American from Los Angeles and she’s super smooth. Plus she’s still in high school. Yeah, high school. (via @djphatrick)

So I guess Web 1.0 is back. I mean, so I hear. "The Great Web 1.0 Revival." Either way, I love it, because if that means more confessional-ish personal writing for me to read, I’m in. Susie got me an invite to Ello this past weekend, and then the Gizmodo article put me onto Tilde.Club, where quite a lot of the bloggers I used to read almost fifteen years ago have homes. (Has it really been so long? Yes, for people like bluishorange for example.) The site is aggressively ugly but I guess that’s the point. Anyway, in honor of the great web regression, a mini-blog roll of people I’ve been reading lately. Normally I would say a little blurb about them, but I think a sample post or two will be enough to draw you in, if you're into this type of blog. Which you should be.

• Zanopticon | Lori in the Sky | Hyun Inc
• Sho & Tell | The Bird Years | OV/R
• Pen & Palate | Jamelle Bouie

• Justin Hall at XOXO
• Scribblings: Short Form Blogging
• Kottke: The blog is dead, long live the blog (2013)

And then there's Matt Kulesza, who is out to have coffee with all 1,088 of his Facebook friends. His project, 1000+ Coffees, is exactly the sort of thing I'm into. A long time ago, I had the thought to write little blurbs about all my friends, as character studies, but then that was shelved because you just can't write honest things about friends, otherwise you will soon be friendless. And then where would I be? Oh right, the Internet.

I was remiss in reminding the world about Encryption Day, Oct 10th. It's the day to change all your passwords! You've never heard of Encryption Day, well maybe beacause I just made it up, and am still waiting for it to catch on... And speaking of useful things, Super Lum has been keeping me up on all things tech, and changed my life with this @@ shortcut as text expander lifehack. Forget eating right and exercising, this one change will actually make you a happier person. Promise.

One of the great mysteries of this year was trying to figure out why Tess Lynch left Grantland, and now we kinda sorta know why. The sad thing is, Emily Yoshida just left too, leading to the dissolution of the Girls in Hoodies podcast. Seriously, this is so sad because Tess, Emily, and Molly Lambert were the only all female pod hosts on Grantland and their chemistry was amazing -- second only to Jacoby and Juliet. I haven’t even listened to the Hoodies' finale because I’m saving it for a special day. A day when I can sit around and laugh and cry, and feel like my friends are leaving me. Yes, it's that serious.

And awhile ago, I ripped through all of Arthur Chu's articles on Daily Beast. He's the former Jeopardy champion that attracted a lot of haters because he "gamed" a game. Anyway, he's smart, interesting, and a new voice on the Asian-American scene, which we always need more of. Just read him.

• Who Is Arthur Chu?
• Branding Arthur Chu
• From Jeopardy villain to social justice warrior

50 Ways to Say Hello

So my first couple days of January have been spent re-doing the fiftyfifty.me site. Lilly and I started fiftyfifty.me last year thinking just a few people would join. I mean, who else wanted to challenge themselves to read fifty books and watch fifty movies in one calendar year?

Turns out, a lot of people! As the weeks rolled by, we watched the number of participants grow all the way up to 350+. I had laughed when Lilly initially said she wanted to hit one hundred sign ups. Guess I lost that bet.

Both of us scrambled hard to complete the challenge, which we accomplished with some late December cramming, and now we're ready to rock again!

Last year's fiftyfifty.me site was last minute thrown together and since I had no idea it would have to track so many people, a simple blog ended up not being quite up to the task. My goal for 2013 was to make the site more functional and better all around.

With the help of Wordpress, Buddypress, and bbForums, the new fiftyfifty.me site has member profiles and a community space for people to interact. Last year I was seriously using a Google Doc to organize everything. It was, suffice to say, a bit unwieldy. Now all the "Overachievers" can gather and cheer each other on while I sit back, sip a sweet tea, and get caught up on my reading. Seriously, it's only a week into January and I already feel behind because I haven't flipped open a single book yet.

You'll notice the new site looks amazing. That's because Susie (boygirlparty) remade the logo and contributed new artwork on every page. Seriously, it all looks so cohesive and pretty now. I just want to hug the entire site. Like forever.

Go read the 2013 welcome message and sign up a year of books and movies! Then hit me up so we can compare notes because there's nothing I like to talk about more than stuff you've seen and read. I mean, what else is there?

Pinata Party

It's Book Blogger Appreciation Week and what better way to celebrate than to, well, I don't know what's a better way to celebrate. Cake and ice cream? Ice cream cake?

The BBAW awards is a great way to find new blogs to read, and there are categories like Best New Blog Blog, Best Blogging Event, Best Written Book Blog, Best Author Interviews, so on and so forth.

I got into YA when book blogs were just coming around and it's been amazing to watch the scene grow. What did people do before there was such a varied forum for readers, authors, and industry folk to share their perspectives, opinions, and inspirations?

"By giving readers the opportunity to engage in significant and regular conversation about literature and reading, book blogs are fundamentally changing the reading landscape. Reviews and criticism no longer come just from above, but from all around us; readers of every age and race, male and female, from pretty much any place you can find on a map, are contributing to the literary conversation. Readers are allowed, even encouraged by other bloggers, to explore any section of the bookstore to which their interests or curiosity lead them.
...
Some people may criticize book blogs because their authors aren’t professional. Some may criticize them because bloggers aren’t well-versed in literary theory or history. Some may criticize the quality of reviews, or the focus on a blogger’s personal life, or the exclusion of a blogger’s personal life from reviews. These, in my mind, are some of the best things about book blogs: that while some of us have studied literature, or work in an industry that keeps us around books for eight hours a day, we AREN’T professional; we are nothing more, nothing less, than average readers.

It is remarkable that so many people devote their time to writing about books, and there are few better responses to those who fear a decline in reading than the number of readers who every day record the things they value and seek in the books they read."
-Why Book Blogs Matter, And Why They Should Matter to More People-

Recos recos

Since all I know how to do is tell you how great other things are, I'm here to share with you some exciting recommendations, and must adds for your blogroll. Just like last time, a semi-curated blogroll included these new additions can be found bundled here.

[Tweetage Wasteland]
Dave Pell is an Internet Superhero and his blog talks about how technology affects his life. I need to know how to become an internet superhero myself actually. And so I read on. I see it as a nice companion to Kevin Kelly's Lifestream.

"Back in the early days of the web I was just a dealer. And I followed the advice I got from the movie Scarface: Don’t get high on your own supply. I used the web as a tool to be more efficient at achieving goals I had set for myself in the outside world... Those days are over. Like Tony Montana, I didn’t follow the advice about getting hooked on the product. As the realtime, social web has erupted, so too has my transition from being a dealer to being a dealer and a hardcore user."
-Confession #67: Say Hello to My Little Friend-

[First Person Singular]
Sari Botton is an author, writer, and on the search for the perfect blogging platform. This particular Tumblr is about memoirs and essays and having just taken a class in the former, I find all of her links and commentary super interesting. Plus she's just seems cool.

"When you read someone’s memoir, you learn a little bit about the world and yourself by taking a look through someone else’s lens. Sure, there are poorly written ones that never take the leap from personal to universal. But it goes without saying that in any good memoir there will be an intense focus on the writer’s internal drama, and this is part of what makes readers able to lose themselves in his or her story."
-How About We Stop Calling Memoirists "Narcissists"-

[Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour]
A recent find, I'm just exploring their writings but the site's tagline is, "Raise a glass to the lost arts of writing, reading, and drinking." Their long blog posts are individually awesome and I'm taking them slow so I don't run out of stuff. They are also quite funny, as this story of Dave taking Jonathan Franzen birdwatching illustrates.

"Perhaps the clearest sign that the literary apocalypse has arrived is the ascendancy of something called Bookscan. For those who might not have heard of it, Bookscan is a robot that determines what you will read. No, not a Kindle, which you will soon read on, or a computer, which is likely where everything we read is heading, but a scanning machine that tallies up the exact sales of an author’s book and so tells editors whether or not they should publish another. Long gone are the days when a writer served a working apprenticeship, hammering out a book or three on their way to mastery"
-The Rise of the Machines: Notes on the Literary Apocalypse-

[Dear Jenny Han]
Fellow young adult author Jenny Han's Tumblr is all sorts of greatness. I mean, aside from vicariously following her along to signings and on tour, you get to to read her diary entries from way long ago. Yeah, like from the Nineties. If I had a friend like her in middle school, well, I would have had one friend.

"My mom’s mad because I forgot to put the rice in the rice cooker. She says I’m lazy! She keeps saying, 'Being smart at school isn’t the most important thing.' Ha! If only she knew. I’m NOT all that smart at school. So now I’m lazy AND dumb."
-me, Aug 1994-

[Writing Your Feelings]
If I could, I'd answer every provoking question that Susana Mai puts up on her writing blog. I really enjoy her Wednesday feature where she recommends things to read. She's put me on a lot of good stories and authors already. I think Mai is an aspiring writer but I'm pretty sure that "aspiring" is just there for humility's sake. I hope she gets published asap so I can read her book. She also must of put a ton of time into this post, "The First Sentence of the New Yorker's Top 20 Under 40."

"People do not give me change. No one asks me why, but I have imagined my answer. They do not give me change because I do not ask for it. I also do not have a cup. I am too embarrassed of my hands. I wash them with track water, and perfume them with Fat Man's bacon, egg and cheese wrapper daily, but still I am self-conscious, and feel like people will not love me."
-Hoyt-Schermerhorn-

[Hyperbole and a Half]
An instant follow based on name alone, Allie Brosh combines illustrations, text, and her mighty observational powers to tell stories that'll make you laugh. And then you forward them to make your friends laugh. And then they forward, and so on and so forth.

"I get sucked into all sorts of unwanted conversations about crazy political conspiracy theories, the annual budget for sports teams I don't care about, advanced scientific debates that I am woefully underprepared for and probing discussions about my breast health. One time, on a Greyhound bus ride to Seattle, I talked to a woman I didn't know for 7 hours about her divorce because I couldn't figure out how to end the conversation. Generally, unwanted conversations happen unexpectedly, so there is very little you can do to avoid them. The Solution: I have no idea; you tell me."
-The Awkward Situation Survival Guide-

Fox Force Five

Listening to: Phoenix, "Girlfriend."

I could go on and on about why I love each of these blogs. But I think if you just go ahead and RSS them and read them you'll love them too. I don't have the words to eloquently explain why I dig these blogs so I'd better let them tell it. Some of them are long time favorites, some of them I've only recently found, but all of them I'm addicted to and wished they posted every second of the day. So this is like my desert island top five of blogs. And they'll serve as introduction to my new and improved blogroll.

Note: I have no idea why these are all blogs written by women. My guess is I tend to favor confessional, personal blogs that are both well written and funny, and for whatever reason it's harder to find guys who blog like that. I'm constantly on the hunt for blogs that fit this criteria. If anyone has suggestions, please pass them along!

[Through the Looking Glass]
"Overall though, I like the patient population in NY better than the patient population in Philadelphia. There’s more diversity, there’s more of an immigrant/working class/trying-to-hustle-and-make-it population, more parents care about their kids. I suppose you could say that there’s less despair in New York. Less resignation to their status in life. These folks are generally busting their asses. And despite all their non-urgent complaints, I recognize that in them and respect that. There’s more pride. You can see it in their appearance. Shabby but clean. In how they tug on their children and tell them to behave appropriately in public. There’s a human-ness in NY that I appreciate."
-New Year's Resolutions-


[Single Spaced]
"As much as I love being a mom, I also need time to just do me. The good news is that I’ve become a lot more confident in this motherhood thing since my daughter was born. One major indicator is that I’ve been able to take myself out of the “mommy wars” context altogether and can say with complete honesty that I’m no longer conflicted about having to work. I’m a lot more comfortable charting my own path as a mom and more confident in my ability to figure things out on my own and with The Huz. There’s a more defined shape to my role as Mommy, and now there’s space to figure out the rest of me and who I am as a woman."
-Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire-


[Relentless Miracles]
"From his new girlfriend, he will not face harassment about attending White Privilege Workshops (“Come on! It’ll be good for you!”). No longer will I make him sit through three hour documentaries about Hurricane Katrina and participate in post-film Q&As with the director. He will not need to attend two hour Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slams; he will not feel guilty about “not wanting to talk about genocide all of the time.” He’ll no longer feel the pressure to vote in primary and midterm elections. His sexual performance will not be graded (“You got a check plus there my friend,” I would say afterwards). He will not receive another postcard from a communist country I have traveled to."
-How Facebook is Ruining My Life-


[Magic Molly]
"Late in the afternoon I sat still and watched the Triops. It had rained all day and the dressing for and braving of weather made me long for a tank of unchanging comfort in which to flutter, like the Triops, without rest. And he doesn’t rest, not that I can tell. A thumb-sized creature in the shape of a horsehoe crab, he is always moving when I turn on the light, subsisting on three pellets per day of Triops Food from a white envelope. This is all. His metabolism must be slow. For a thing in perpetual motion, he keeps the weight on."
-Technical memoranda-


[The Antisocial Ladder]
"When I was 18, I met my first Hmong friend, who upon initial meeting I thought was Chinese. For once, I was getting to confuse someone as Chinese. She was telling a story about how one of the little kids we worked with kept referring to her as Chinese, but that she was in fact Hmong. She laughed and I laughed along with her, pretending to know what the hell she was talking about. Later, I actually went through the dictionary looking for the mystery ethnicity of which she spoke. "Is it spelled Mung? Mong? Like Mongolian? Is that another way of saying your Mongolian?" My thick head never would have guessed that you needed an 'h.'"
-What Ocean?-

More Than Words

Blogger is turning ten this weekend. I was trying to figure out how I could commemorate the moment since it's kind of an important milestone for them -- and me. I thought there would be some awesome way to create a list of things that have happened in my life during all this blogging but I realized what's the point? It's already done and out there among my blogs. I did dig through my archives a bit and realized that I started blogging on Wednesday, October 4, 2000. As a frame of reference, the Playstation 2 was released later that month. If that helps. Probably not.

Since October 2000 I've started countless blogs, switched my main site a few times, and evangelized to and bullied people into blogging every chance I could. The answer to almost any problem was "start a blog." Upset about your significant other? Start an anonymous blog. Need to keep people updated about your life (pre-Facebook)? Start a blog. Incredibly bored at work with nothing to do? Start a blog. Have no friends? Start a blog. The possibilities were/are endless. I've witnessed "blog" start out as this weird little word, turn into a sort of geeky hobby, and then transform into something that's become an essential and enjoyable part of many people's daily lives.

Heck, I've even been fortunate enough to have blogging turn directly into a writing career. My first book was a book about blogging for Rough Guides and that all came about because I had a blog that people liked to read. It got me an agent, it got me friends, it got me published. It kind of got me a life you know? This will sound weird and cheesy and maybe only long time bloggers will understand, but blogging has been a really good (and constant) friend for the past decade. It's been somewhere to share my thoughts, to vent about life, to build a community of people, and to focus my writing.

There's lots of little things you pick up while maintaining a blog. You learn to reflect on events and to present them in a semi-coherent way. You learn to organize your writing. You get to experience the give and take of having readers and people who'll respond to something you wrote. You get the freedom to write about any damn thing you want, and then to find like minded people -- who are always out there, no matter how obscure the topic. And the best part is that you get to go back in time and read a younger you, and even if he sounds stupid or insanely cringe-inducing, it's a record of your days and thoughts and that kind of time warp is priceless. Our memories aren't perfect and it's only getting worse, but blogger's memory is long lasting and forever, like best friends forever.

Nine years ago, here's what I was doing:

"I'm at my 17th day of work right now. I'm an intern at aMedia. They publish aMagazine. aOnline is the 'Asian American Digital Network.' To be more specific, I'm a Marketing Intern. Which means I do lots of web surfing and research. I also do lots of interny-stuff for our event coordinator. I look up contact information for people, research limo prices, that kind of thing. It's all very glamorous as I'm sure you would of guessed."
-yellow brick road-

This was my very first job out of college and I had lots of menial responsibilities as well as plenty of time to blog. My friend James turned me onto Blogger and I was instantly hooked. For some reason, I was heavily influenced by Socratic dialogue and created two characters to talk about things. Tragically, I didn't know enough HTML to have the conversations come out correctly so now the archives are all weird unless you read from the bottom up.

My friend Ameer, also a long time blogger, had a printed out and nicely bound copy of his entire blog -- complete with comments -- presented to him by his sister a few years back. Flipping through it, all I could think of was "Dang, how cool would it be to have my blog all printed out?" So that's what I'm going to do to celebrate my blog turning ten next year. I want a thick huge tome of my blogs on a coffee table. Maybe even my coffee table, if I'm lucky enough to own one by then. Dare to dream.

I know there are tons of other blogging services that sprang up post-Blogger but I've never switched off despite all sorts of infuriating issues. I'm been pretty much unable to commit to much over the last decade but if nothing else, I've been a Blogger brand loyalist and I don't think I'll ever switch.

I know, this post is like the closest thing I've written to a love letter in quite some time. Excuse the outburst of emotion.

Awards Season

Nominations and voting for the 2009 Bloggies have opened. I always check'em out because you can never have enough good blogs to read. This year, 8asians.com is nominated in the Best Group Weblog category. My friend Brian blogs for them but that's not the only reason to vote them up!

Also, this came out awhile ago but Fimoculous has a great list of "30 Most Notable Blogs of 2008." It was through his list that I found Molly Young, who reminds me slightly of technicolor.org. "[Molly] writes in that hyper-literate but still somehow accessibly intimate way that make all her blog posts read like entries in one of those diaries that score its author a publishing contract."

"Of all the bad things a person can be, 'boring' was my bete noire from the age of consciousness until mid-college. This is probably because I was so often paralyzed in social interactions, unable to think of anything to say or do. In fact, a good amount of the time I passed alone was spent stocking up on Things To Say. I used to keep a small notebook with reminders of funny anecdotes, news items, novelties and jokes to sprinkle into conversation. I even consulted the book (discreetly) during interactions to freshen my supply. It didn't work very well -- I often had to shoehorn unrelated sentences into topical conversations -- but it was better than being a blank.

Now things are more fluid up there, but only among those I know well."
-Public opinion is a tyrant-

K.I.T.

Do you want to improve your immune system functions? Decrease your levels of stress? Cope better with trauma and past emotional experiences? Increase your attention span and memory capacity? How about having longer lasting relationships? All this and more can be had by simply writing in a journal for as little as fifteen minutes a day.

That's how Penzu.com breaks down the health benefits of keeping a journal. Strangely, the last bullet pointed benefit is "Finding a new job quickly if unemployed." I'd think that those fifteen minutes might be more valuable submitting an extra resume or two but we all know submitting resumes is a risky propsition anyway. Jobs come from people you know and people they know. Qualifications and past experience? All a wash if you have an in. That's the working world I've seen anyway.

I'll stop digressing.

Penzu.com is a novel journaling site because the interface is basically just a plain piece of college ruled paper. It feels so familiar and is much less intimidating than staring at a blank field. Penzu seems to focus more on keeping your journal private (as it should be) than integrating any of the features we'd come to expect in this blogging world. No cluttered sidebars, a slightly inefficient navigation system, and that's about it. Faced with a 8.5' x 11' it's everything you can do to NOT want to write something down.

Of course, if you need a little help getting started on topic ideas, Penzu's got a few suggestions too.

And the award goes to...

The new Bloggie Awards are up. I usually go straight out and check the "Best Writing, Best New Weblog, Best Kept Secret Weblog, and Best Designed Weblog" categories. I have to say, I'm getting kind of sick of seeing the same blogs nominated (and winning) year after year. I mean, I don't need to know that Engadget is popular. Or that Blogger is the best web application for blogs. Duh. Can we stop awarding sites after they've won once? Wouldn't that be more useful?

Can you imagine if The Godfather kept winning the Best Picture Oscar year after year? Boring. Show me something new please. If anything, lists like the World's Most Powerful 50 Blogs are infinitely more interesting because they give me a chance to find some blogs I've never heard of. Let's revamp the Bloggies and really make cool it cool again instead of just prestigious and entrenched.

Bloggie Awards

Another year, another round of Bloggies, the Academy Awards of the blogging world. I'm a little disappointed that so many of the winners I already know about. I was hoping to find a few gems to add to my reading collection. Then again, I haven't had too much time to dig through everything quite yet. I'm also sad that the "Best Tagline of a Weblog" category is now defunct. That was always good for a laugh or two. Anyway, check'em out!

What I have been exploring is this site, CollegeOTR.com, which is a blog portal focused on colleges. It reveals a side of campus life that wouldn't be available in any sanctioned outlet. I keep thinking about how fun it would have been to have blogs when I went to college. I would have blogged my little life away. At my alma mater, Michigan, there's been this recent brouhaha involving an an anonymous blogger who takes (hilarious) potshots at the Umich Greek scene. He was unveiled recently so I hope he runs fast and carries a big stick.

The Takeover

It makes sense right? Billions of people plus blogging? Eventually some Chinese person would take over the top of the blog charts. It's finally happened as Xu Jinglei, a Chinese actress and director, became the world's most widely read blogger recently. For approximately two years she's averaged 167,000 page views a day. That's a lot of page views -- and cash, if she monetized her site.

Tragically, I can't read a lick of Chinese -- despite years of Chinese school -- so I can't understand anything she's blogging about but apparently she's pretty good. Then again, the abundant use of emoticons and pictures of her cats makes me pretty wary to read her blog, even if it were in English. Some things require no translation.

More importantly, this means I'm about 166,999 page views a day away from being the world's most widely read blogger. Maybe I should get a cat.

The Bloggies

The nominations for the 2007 Bloggies, the Academy Awards of the blogosphere, have been unveiled! This is the seventh year the Bloggies will be handing out cash prizes (sometimes up to $25 or more) and bestowing recognition upon the worthy. This is a great place to find blogs that have already been reader-tested and fan-approved. Go there to vote for the coveted "Weblog of the Year" and make your voice heard.

Only you can prevent forest fires!