Category: Doing

MUXTAPE: IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

If you click on the mix­tape link in the top nav­i­ga­tion, you’ll find a puz­zling mes­sage from Mux­tape. It reads as fol­lows: “Mux­tape will be unavail­able for a brief peri­od while we sort out a prob­lem with the RIAA.” It was a con­cern I had the moment Mux­tape went viral in late March. Any­one who was pay­ing atten­tion when the site launched could’ve seen this com­ing, despite Mux­tape’s efforts to tie the site to Ama­zon and defend it from would-be stream rip­pers. Appar­ent­ly it was­n’t enough. It’s hard to believe that they’ll be back any­time soon.

I’m actu­al­ly a lit­tle sur­prised that there has­n’t been more out­cry over this. I’ve only seen this post from Val­ley­wag in my feed read­er so far. This is the stuff of an epic Hip­ster Runoff post! Will there be a har­row­ing exo­dus from Mux­tape to 8tracks? I already have!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

I STILL NEED YOUR LINKS!

I edit­ed my blogroll again this morn­ing. I’m treat­ing it as a more flu­id space until I can cat­e­go­rize these links on the links page prop­er. I’m try­ing to keep it live­ly so it’s just not a col­lec­tion of totemic links that you see on pret­ty much every blog in the known uni­verse. That prac­tice to me is a rel­ic of the days when one might try to ingra­ti­ate one­self to an edi­tor by read­ing their stuff reli­gious­ly. We’ve all done it, but it’s just silly.

There’s anoth­er rea­son I’m so adamant about this now. It’s the way of the Inter­net. Peo­ple used to treat their blogrolls like a new­stand to show off how var­ied their opin­ions were, or worse, to show­case well-con­nect­ed friends on the Inter­net. That too is sil­ly. If the blog is one of the basic units of social media, then it should be a social expe­ri­ence where every­thing is flu­id. Don’t just link to a blog out of oblig­a­tion! Tell us why you did it and why your read­ers should too.

This just isn’t about nudg­ing your online friends with memes; it should­n’t be cut­ting and past­ing a press release; it should be about hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one and shar­ing it with every­one. It makes for a much rich­er expe­ri­ence and will like­ly fill in those writer­ly gaps we all strug­gle with when we sit down to blog. It does­n’t have to be so hard!

So here’s what I want from you: I’m look­ing for peo­ple who are writ­ing fre­quent­ly and engag­ing­ly on almost any­thing. Drop your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments box if you feel so moved to rep for your­self or some­one you’re read­ing. Keep in mind that I actu­al­ly sub­scribe to the blogs I list. It takes a vil­lage, right?

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1

I RAN 13 MILES TODAY!

I’ve been blog­ging about train­ing for the Philadel­phia Marathon on three dif­fer­ent plat­forms (first Tum­blr, then Pos­ter­ous, then final­ly Dai­ly Mile. For the record, I liked Pos­ter­ous best.) I’m decid­ing right now to go the Lizzyville route and make my progress a part of this blog going for­ward. Sound good? Good.

The last two weeks have been inter­est­ing. I’ve been run­ning for nine weeks. As I’ve men­tioned before, I’m fol­low­ing Hal Hig­don’s inter­me­di­ate two sched­ule. It’s gone well so far, even if I’m intim­i­dat­ed by some of these dis­tances. Last week, I was hob­bled by shin splints and gen­er­al stiff­ness. This week was a 180 degree turn­around and I have no idea why. Weird, right?

I don’t know what was dif­fer­ent between this week and last, but I hope I can keep run­ning like I did this week­end. We spent the entire week­end at the Jer­sey shore, cel­e­brat­ing Helen’s 30th birth­day at our friends Suzanne and Frank’s house in Atlantic City. It was a great time, punc­tu­at­ed by two runs totalling 19 miles: six on Sat­ur­day and 13 this morn­ing. Both were com­fort­able and quick.

This morn­ing’s run was great. Rob and I hit the boards at just about 6 a.m. and ran two miles and change to the Vent­nor end before turn­ing around and run­ning all the way to the top, past the casi­nos on some of the rick­eti­est board­walk I’ve ever set foot on. But we weren’t fin­ished there. We turned around and ran all the way back down to the Vent­nor end before mak­ing one last turn to fin­ish the last mile and a half. It took just under two hours and was a per­son­al best dis­tance for both Rob and me. I nev­er thought a 13 mile run would feel so good!

Now I’m real­ly excit­ed to run the Philadel­phia Dis­tance run. Today’s run told me that I’ll be ready for it!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

MAKING A CALL FOR COMICS

This item caught my eye over at Book­slut last Fri­day as I whit­tled away at my feed read­er. As I checked out io9’s plea to Hol­ly­wood, it under­lined how much I need to start read­ing comics again. But there’s more to it than that. If you’re one of the poor souls fol­low­ing me on Good Reads, you know I’ve been work­ing on David Had­ju’s lat­est book, The Ten Cent Plague, for­ev­er. It’s been a fas­ci­nat­ing read, but an inter­rupt­ed one. The upshot? I want to read comics like nev­er before!

A lit­tle back­ground: I’ve nev­er been a com­ic book read­er. A lot of that I’ll chalk up to tim­ing. Being born in 1977 to par­ents in then very rur­al Berks Co., Penn­syl­va­nia, meant not hav­ing access to a lot of things cul­tur­al (read: cool.) It also meant not being exposed to such-like until lat­er in life. My friend Ben Warfield hand­ed me a few comics dur­ing high school, mem­o­rably the Martha Wash­ing­ton series and V for Vendet­ta, both of which I con­sumed hasti­ly when I should’ve been read­ing stuff like Ethan Frome. I haven’t read much since then, oth­er than falling in love with Amer­i­can Splen­dor a few years ago when the movie came out, just like every­one else.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I plan on track­ing down some of io9’s sug­ges­tions, start­ing with Heavy Liq­uid, which is con­ve­nient­ly being reis­sued at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Treat their list like a primer. I’m also reach­ing out to folks who I know are into comics (Toby and Dou­glas, you’re my only hopes. Send links!)

But what would a blog post be with­out a seri­ous qual­i­fi­er? Here it comes: I’ll issue the caveat that it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I’m not going to end up devot­ing myself to comics (maybe I’m wrong?), but I’d love to be exposed to some cool, new stuff. If any­one has sug­ges­tions, or is as curi­ous and in the dark as I am on this stuff, feel free to hit up the comments!

(P.S. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how I want to for­mat titles on Black­mail Is My Life. Tell me if you pre­fer all caps to what I’ve been doing. You can also let me know if you think the font is easy to read, or if changes should be made. Thanks!)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay